TEAMROCK+ EXCLUSIVE: Paradise Lost (extended Welcome Back)

The Victor Meldrew of heavy metal talks funeral doom, ‘darkness’, teenagers and has a moan about long hair.

Paradise Lost singer Nick Holmes has always had something of the grumpy old man about him. Known to his friends as Moans, he has a black sense of humour and a glass-half-empty demeanour – in keeping with his role as frontman for the UK’s premier gothic metal band. He is the Victor Meldrew of heavy metal.

Formed in Halifax in 1988, Paradise Lost rose in the early 90s with a series of powerful and influential albums including Gothic, Icon and Draconian Times. On late-90s albums One Second and Host the band incorporated electronica into a radically different sound comparable to Depeche Mode. But now, with their fourteenth album, The Plague Within, they have, in part, gone back to their death-metal roots.

Holmes reckons this album is among the best they’ve recorded. But he’ll always find something to moan about – whether it’s hair loss, his teenage daughters, a troublesome vacuum cleaner…